Life Updates of a Larger Magnitude

This Christmas was pretty awesome. No wait, I mean that with a capital A. Awesome. First, having kids is stupidly hard, but also ridiculously amazing. As all great things seem to be. But Christmas with kids is like... no metaphor needed. Anyway. Back to my ramblings about a more homey Christmas, full of booze that I can't ship and cookies that I "forget" to give away. Sounds like a Merry and Bright recipe to me! About 2 weeks before Christmas I help B write a letter to Santa. She says she wants a "princess castle". 1 week before Christmas I get the genius idea to build this castle out of scrap wood and paint. Total cost: about $30 for hinges and hardware. I'm feeling pretty smug. Then I start building the beast and find myself constantly muttering "it's for kids. it's for kids." Meaning - stop screwing around trying to make it pretty and just get it done. Whatever. I get it done. It's pretty sweet, but there is d...

I really REALLY wanted my kitchen to incorporate some of my love for bright happy colors. I thought that the kitchen is the perfect place for this, and I've been in some kitchens that have done it so perfectly - I wanted that to be me. I failed. Not once, not twice, but 3 times. The first was with a punchy blue color. Bleh. Then I moved on to green. It was better, livable, and honestly, I didn't want to admit defeat just yet. I thought it just needed the right accessory... I didn't like that either. So I went online to Cooltiles.com , and bought the cheapest tile I could in a neutral pattern that I liked. $60 later, I had something I could live with (and since that was how much I had spent on paint at this point, why not?) Then they sat in my garage waiting for *someone* to have the time to put them up. Conveniently, my parents came down last weekend and my mom said "What project can I do?" Oh Mom, let me show you! (When my mom says ...

So the countertop kit we bought was a pretty sweet alternative to replacing them with laminate ($700) or granite ($1600). Because of our huge peninsula, we would have had to get custom and not the cheap off-the-Lowes-shelf ones. The countertop kit was about $220 I think, and was Rustoleum's Desert Sand. To be honest, I wish there were more color choices. We are going with a grey-ish theme to the house, and our options were few and brown. Or black, which would have been way too dark with the cabinets. The kit is a relatively easy (albeit messy) process. First you goop on some colored glue. Then you use a tool similar to a grass-seed spreader to throw paint chip speckles all over it. Then you sand it smooth and apply a tough and shiny topcoat. Took us about 1 whole weekend with all the drying and sanding. The end result is a kitchen that looks millions of times better than the original.

My last post reminded me that I hadn't updated on the house reno in quite a while. The last time was in June, and we have really cranked it up a few notches since then. The first thing we tackled after painting and carpets was the kitchen. See awesome "Before" pictures: We bought Rustoleums Cabinet and Countertop Transformation kits (Kona and Desert Sand, respectively) and went to town. They are not cheap, but they're not expensive, either. The cabinets cost about $80, the countertops cost about $200 I think. Totally worth it. We kept the appliances, range hood, and hinges (painted the hood and hinges dark brown). I hope to replace the range and fridge with stainless steel version in the next year or so. Painting the cabinets was a long, tedious process, but in the end it was totally worth it. The cabinet project took us an entire weekend, and we had to get rid of the kiddies or we never would have finished. The countertops took us the next weekend, ...

When we decided to spend Christmas in Florida, a switch flipped in my head. I decided to try to slow down this Christmas season and take it back to the basics. Meaning, more about the joy of doing and being than the joy of spending money and going to parties and drinking. Both methods have their time and place, don't get me wrong. :) Every year around November I make a list of all the people that I want to give gifts to, an idea of what I'd like to give them, and then a dollar amount. This is the basic list: Matt, Brynna, Eve, Parents (3 sets) - $50/each = $300. Plus I make photo calendars and books, which add up to another $150, so now we're at $450 for family. Realistically, Matt and I always end up spending more on each other, because it's fun to give gifts that you wouldn't normally splurge on during the year. In some years when things have been more solid financially, we've spent as much as twice that amount on the family set. Then we have our ...